


Snow Day

by littlereyofsunlight



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Cuddling, Multi, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), also some dancing, and hot cocoa!, and some whining, blizzard 2016 fic, civil war? what civil war, snowy day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5861305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlereyofsunlight/pseuds/littlereyofsunlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several ficlets inspired by the near-record-breaking winter storm we just had in NYC.<br/>Who doesn't like thinking of our favorite superheroes all cozy and cuddly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve/Bucky

Bucky watched Steve crane his neck, trying to get a better view out the window as the storm blew snow around the tower.

“Better view than we had back in ‘41, isn't it?”

Steve nodded absently, his eyes tracking the swirling flakes. He was enthralled, his mouth hanging slightly open, cheeks flushed just a little. His fingers twitched like he was holding a pencil to paper, just about to begin a sketch. Bucky scoffed to himself as he thought of how Steve had always taken an unnatural interest in the things that were worst for him. He heaved himself off the couch and pulled an extra throw blanket down from their hall closet. He grabbed Steve’s pad and pencil case off the kitchen island before he made his way back to Steve.

First he wrapped the soft fleece around Steve’s shoulders, then when Steve looked up, his brows drawn together and lips quirked up to start a question, Bucky dropped the supplies in his lap.

“You were in the hospital with pneumonia in ‘41. Father McKinney had a hell of a time comin’ over from Saint Martha’s in the middle of the storm to give you your last rites, but the sisters insisted. Do you remember at all?”

Steve pulled the blanket close around his shoulders. “I remember you sitting with me for three days straight. You missed work.”

Bucky smirked. “I woulda missed more if that blizzard hadn’t shut down the yard for a full day. But at least that one I knew where you were the whole time.”

Steve ducked his head and fiddled with the zipper on his pencil pouch. He’d heard this one before.

“Not like back in ‘35. I know you remember that one.”

“Jeeze, Buck, it’s been eighty years. Are you ever gonna let me live that one down?”

“Maybe if you stay put for this one and manage not to fall deathly ill, I might start feeling better about you and snowstorms.”

Steve’s blush had reached the tips of his ears. Bucky took pity on him and sat back down, holding his arm out so Steve could cuddle into his side.

“You just don’t get that kinda light every day, you know,” Steve groused, but the effect was tempered since he’d pressed his face to Bucky’s chest. “Besides, I wasn’t just wandering around in ‘35. I was with Annalise. You remember, she used to model for me, and her room had those big north-facing windows.”

“Annalise who had no heat? Yes, I remember you yelling something to that effect once you finally came back home. Somehow it was not a reassuring thought. Maybe because it took a few hours by the stove before your feet turned pink again when you finally got home.”

“You started yelling first, Buck.”

“Yeah, it only took me near-eighteen years to learn that trick.” Steve snorted. Bucky reeled him in tighter, wrapping his mechanical hand around Steve’s right bicep, and Steve tossed his drawing supplies onto the other side of the couch. “Just stick close for this one, okay? Weather service says it’s on track to break records.”

“I’m not ninety-five pounds soaking wet anymore, you know. The serum keeps me from catching most bugs. And I run pretty hot these days.”

“Quit braggin’, Rogers. Just humor your best pal, okay?” Bucky tucked his chin to the top of Steve’s head and breathed in deep. Steve hummed contentedly. “If I promise to make hot chocolate, will you stay put? I'll use whole milk, none of that two percent stuff Wilson keeps buying.”

Bucky could feel Steve’s chuckle reverberate through his ribs. He hid his smile in Steve’s downy fine hair.

“You know, this does remind me a bit of ‘35.”

“That so?”

“I think Annalise and I wound up huddled under a heap of blankets in pretty much this exact position.”

“Stevie, you little shit. I knew you’d made time with her.”

“Well she really didn’t have any heat in that drafty room with the big windows. The snow kept blowing in through a crack in the frame. What were we supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to tell me about it the next day! You’ve been holding out on me for eighty years?”

“I think we can excuse a few of those years, don’t you?” Steve managed to burrow closer to Bucky, twisting so he could hook his knee over Bucky’s thigh, tugging the blanket up to his own ear. “Anyways, if I’d known this was an option back in the day, I wouldn’t have spent a single storm anywhere else.” 

“Yeah, yeah.”

Steve nudged up the hem of Bucky’s tee and slipped his fingers under the waistband of his pants.

“Did these moves work on poor Annalise?”

Steve looked up at Bucky from under his thick lashes, the picture of innocence. “Who do ya think I learned ‘em from?”


	2. Tony/Pepper

“Mr. Stark, I have Ms. Potts on the line,” Friday chirped in Tony’s ear as he banked right over the Manhattan Bridge, headed back to the Tower. 

“Put her through, Friday, we’ve talked about this. Put Pep through immediately unless I’m under fire.”

“Yes, boss.” 

Tony sighed. There was definitely a hint of petulance in the AI’s computerized voice. When Tony had designed her to be as advanced as Jarvis, he hadn’t completely thought through what that would mean for her personality development. Namely, that she _would_ develop one. And this personality had a little, tiny bit of a thing against his girlfriend. What a cliche. (Still, not as bad as the _other_ AI that-should-not-be-named. Friday was a total peach compared to him. She was a peach orchard. Peachtree Street. The entire state of Georgia. In comparison.)

“Tony?” A video feed of Pepper, already tucked into their bed, from the looks of it, popped up in his display. 

“Hey Pep, I’m headed home now.”

“Oh good, Rhodey called to make sure you weren’t flying around in this. And I couldn’t tell him that you weren’t.” Her eyes narrowed pointedly.

As if on cue, a gust of wind sent him veering slightly off course, and Friday wasn’t quite as responsive at correcting for it. Not yet. So Pepper could see the face he made while he brought the suit back on track.

“Tony…” The warning and concern were clear in Pepper’s voice.

“Aw, don’t you want to build a snowman?” Tony made his face as Elsa-like as possible for a moment before swooping down over the newly refurbished landing platform. 

He was rewarded with the telltale pursing of Pepper’s lips that meant she’d found him funny, but wasn’t in the mood for it. He knew that particular quirk very well after all these years.

“Lucy, I’m home,” he said. Pep hated his Ricky Ricardo impression, but his visor retracted before he got a chance to see the adorable face she made every time he did it. Instead, he was blasted in the face by a stinging blast of cold air. “Jesus, Friday! Protocol for inclement weather is to allow me _inside_ before removing the armor.” He threw up a recently un-gauntleted arm against the wind and hurried to the sliding glass door. 

“Yes, boss.” Friday chirped.

“Fffffuck, it’s cold out there,” Tony’s teeth chattered as he shucked the rest of the Mark 46. “Friday, let’s make the temperature a bit more tropical, since Pepper refused to abscond with me to my actual tropical island for the weekend.”

“I have a brunch tomorrow!” Pepper shouted from the bedroom.

“I hate to break it to you sweetheart,” he hurried into the room and slipped under the covers next to her, still wearing his undersuit, “but that is definitely going to be cancelled.”

“Tony, no suit in the bed!”

He responded by placing his freezing cold feet against her calves. Pepper shrieked and twisted away, so he stuck his hands on her back under her cami for good measure.

“You are so cold! I thought this suit had climate-control.”

“It does, but my terror of an AI started tearing it off me while I was still out on the roof.”

“Sorry, boss,” Friday chirped, not sounding sorry at all.

“I miss Jarvis,” Pepper mumbled.

“Ditto.” Tony sat up to shrug out of the upper portion of his bodysuit. 

“Can’t you make her less...chirpy?” Pepper set aside her StarkPad and handed him a tee shirt. He shimmied out of the leggings, trying to stay as far under the covers as possible, and threw the undersuit on the floor.

“Maybe. Last time I messed around with her voice protocols she got snippy, though.”

“Independent little thing.”

“I happen to like my women independent.” Pepper gave him the face. Once his brain caught up to his mouth, Tony grimaced right back. “Okay, right, no calling the AI ‘my woman’.”

“Thank you.” 

“You’re the only independent woman I need in my life. Between you and Rhodey, my platonic same-sex life-partner, I am completely set.”

“I’m unconvinced you could find your way down to your workshop without an AI, but if you say so…” Pepper’s mocking him face was the sexiest face she made (among many very sexy faces; there was just something about her, beyond the fact that Virginia Potts was among one of the most capable and empathetic human beings he’d ever met, of course. She had a ridiculously expressive face, and most of those expressions were sexy.)

Tony scoffed. “It’s on the seventieth floor.”

“Seventy-second, boss.” Friday chirped.

Pepper bit her lip. It was sexy.


	3. Natasha & Clint

Natasha had been at it for two hours straight at this point. Sweat was beginning to run down from the nape of her neck, under her tidy bun. Still, as the snow fell outside, she crossed to the corner and settled into fifth position to begin yet another recitation of the simple combination across the floor. 

Piqué to first arabesque, faille across and another piqué to first arabesque. Her legs felt long and strong underneath her. Another brush step into a temps levé on her left, with her right foot en pointe, resting against the space between her calf and ankle. Then a balancé beginning on her left, en arrière and again on the right in the same direction. She lifted her leg for the tombé pas de bourrée, and in her mind’s eye saw red curtains drawing closed, shutting out the view of another storm, in another place. She pirouetted and closed her eyes for a moment while the music swelled, snapping them open again to detourné en point, executing a perfect tendu. Pliéing in fifth position, she took a deep breath and launched into a series of fouettés, whipping her leg out and around. Many beats later, she came to a brief pause and resolutely ignored the echo of years-gone applause in her ears. She shivered almost imperceptibly under her thin wrap sweater before stepping into a set of grand pas de chats that rivaled the great Flying Sizova, or so she’d been told once upon a time. It was almost like flying.

Ending at the barre against the windows, breathing heavily, The Black Widow grasped it with both hands, leaning her forehead on the cool glass. The wind howled outside, but the city itself was quiet beneath her in the predawn hours. 

She sighed with frustration, feeling it zip through her muscles. She could dance it away. She had before. Straightening her spine and slipping back under her placid mask, she turned and began to pirouette around the perimeter of her studio. Natasha made three full, flawless turns around the entire room. 

She only stopped when Clint let out a low whistle from the doorway. 

For long moments the only sounds in the room are her harsh breaths, his calm ones, underscored by the classical music playing low from the ipod dock in the corner. 

Then the air changes and Clint strides across the room to the music player. The wavering strings cut out, replaced seconds later by thumping bass. He whipped off his sweatshirt and began gyrating with abandon. 

Nat stood stock still for a moment longer, cooly regarding him in the thin light. Then she, too, started busting a move.


	4. Darcy and Sam (plus Steve and Bucky)

“No no no no no!” Darcy threw herself onto the big plush sectional in the common room, narrowly missing Sam’s knee. 

“What’s wrong, baby girl? Did your new suede booties get wet out in the snow? It’s getting nasty out there.”

“Saaaaaaaaaaaam,” Her whine was muffled by the couch cushions.

“It’s no big deal, we can clean that up.” He turned back to his hot cocoa. Not that he’d ever admit it to Bucky, but it was so much better with whole milk. The man had something against two percent, but not everyone who lived in the tower was a preternatural product of super-serum. 

“No.” Darcy propped herself up on her elbows and gave him a pitiful face, all scrunchy eyebrows and pouty lips. “They cancelled tonight’s performance.”

Sam’s reaction was immediate. He shot up off the couch, sloshing cocoa onto his sweats. “Aww, no, man! They can’t! We’ve been waiting months to go!”

Darcy could only whine and flop back onto her face, but she held up her phone. Sam plucked it out of her hand.

“We regret to inform you…” he read, and skimmed further down the email. “A refund? No tickets to a later show? Aw, come on!”

Darcy just groaned behind him.

Sam wheeled around, finger on his nose. “Not it. Not it, not it, not it, man.”

“What?” She wriggled onto her side and gave him a confused glare. 

“I’m not gonna be the one to tell Cap he doesn’t get to see the show he’s been raving about for months. Nuh-uh.”

“Why me?” Now it was Darcy’s turn to shoot off the couch. “Fuck no, Wilson, you know how to handle him. Plus, I am nursing my own broken heart here. Don’t make me deal with his puppy dog eyes, too.” Darcy was, of course, no stranger to puppy dog eyes herself, and she employed hers to full effect at that moment.

“i don’t know why I put up with y’all. Buncha whiny babies…” Sam muttered, finally reaching for a napkin to swipe at his sodden pjs. 

“Whining is justified!” Darcy retorted. 

“Why is whining justified?” Bucky snuck up behind them both, stopping on his way to the kitchen for more cocoa. Steve was right behind him, the tail of the blanket he’d wrapped around himself trailing between his legs.

“Darcy, what happened?” Steve had a way of sounding stern and concerned (and also patriotic) at the same time, which Sam couldn’t really wrap his head around.

Bucky dropped his hand onto her head, stroking back her dark locks. “What’s wrong baby doll, didja make a mess of those new shoes you just bought?”

Darcy just groaned loudly into the couch. Steve looked at Sam quizzically. Sam took a deep breath, bracing himself.

“Hamilton’s cancelled for today. All the Broadway shows are.”


End file.
